From the Desk of Matilda Darling

Dear Society, I certainly hope that whomsoever has deigned to read this, my latest epistolary opus, perceives the irony inherent in the above salutation, because I know that it is more than likely that exactly no…

Dear Superstorm Sandy, Sandy, you pernicious jezebel, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I find myself in dire need of redress for a further list of grievances that have amassed against your meteorological person in…

Dear Superstorm Sandy, I am well aware, self-centered pre-adolescent though I may be, that of all the millions of persons on the Eastern Seaboard affected by Hurricane Sandy, I am the least of these. Your swirling…

Dear Curiously Aligned Universe, Indeed, this eighth grade year does continue to persist in unfolding most strangely. God knows I have tried to fully insulate myself from the insidious tentacles of social life, have time and…

Dear Slightly Less Cruel Universe, Recent events in my circumscribed, pre-but-almost-adolescent life have given me cause to reflect on the strange beast that is American mass transit. Although my experience with mass transit has been limited…

Dear Cruel Universe, Sometimes we literary dissidents, we harbingers of truth, are required to mete out a temporary sort of armistice with the world, the intellectual and moral decay of which we are so bitterly and…

Dear United States Women’s Artistic Gymnastics National Team, As much as it pains me to consider the cutesy infantile tragedy that is your team nickname, I have resolved to take up this cross and carry it,…

Dear D.A.R.E., Events occurring both on the world stage and in the more circumscribed theatre of my own life in the preceding weeks have given me cause to ponder the effectiveness of the curricula posited by…

Dear Sir or Madam: Recently, my quality of life took a rather abrupt downswing when I was unexpectedly required to accompany my mother on one of her weekly visits to the chiropractor. Some undoubtedly banal meeting…

Dear Sir or Madam: Although my open letters are usually, in keeping with the genre, quite critical of their subject, I must say that on this cold grey winter Monday morn, you, Downton Abbey, have filled…

Trop is a project of the Pasadena Arts Council’s EMERGE Fiscal Sponsorship Program.